For years, I made buttonholes in costumes the same way I made them for
everyday clothing -using the buttonhole feature on my sewing machine. My
mother and Home Economics teacher had both taught me how to do them by hand,
but since I never made anything haute couture enough to warrant such attention
to detail, I merrily got by with machine-made buttonholes.

Until I made a gardecorpes for my husband. Suddenly, I had a
desire to make buttons authentic to the garment, but had little to go on.
So, I made the kind I'd learned how to as a girl – mark the slit, surround it
with double running stitch, cut the slit, and put down retentively perfect
stitches, laid neatly side by side.

Later, I acquired Arnold's Patterns of Fashion and Crowfoot,
Pritchard and Staniland's Medieval Finds From Excavations in London: 4
Textiles and Clothing, c.1150-1450 and the scales fell off my eyes.
To begin with, prior to the 16th century, buttonholes were very simple, being just a slash with a few
buttonhole stitches worked down either side, with nothing done to strengthen
the ends of the slits (Crowfoot, p.171). The assumption is that 16th century clothing, being more closely fitted and
tailored, resulted in more stress upon the button closures, and required
reinforcement. My own theory is that the seam allowances turned under along
the opening of a lined garment, or the fold-over hemmed along the edge, served
as a stop-cut, making an end bar unnecessary, and that bars in the 16th century are largely decorative.

Even in the 16th century,
reinforcing stitches across the ends of the slits was not universal. In
Arnold, there are examples of:

•Bars only across end of the slit facing the garment's
opening, (Arnold, p.23, fig. 148)

•Bars across both ends of slit (ibid., p.20,
fig.120),

•Bars across neither end of slit (ibid., p.27, fig.
178)

In several instances, a decorative braid running down either or both
sides of the buttonhole placket might be covering bars, or acting in lieu of
them.

Tailors didn't appear to have knocked themselves out making the
buttonholes a work of art. Crowfoot, describing medieval London finds,
notes that buttonholes cut from sleeve openings and hood fastenings are made up
of stitches set about 0.5mm apart, rather than being "packed closely
together to form a solid band as is normal today" (Crowfoot, p.171).
Arnold gives an example of a red doublet, c.1560, with buttonholes worked in a
packed satin stitch (Arnold, p.20, fig.120); but she also shows us a
German doublet, c.1605, on which the buttonhole stitches gap about 1 thread's
thickness apart (ibid., p.20, fig. 123).

Buttonholes varied in length, generally depending upon the size of the
button. Medieval examples range from 7-10mm (5/16"-3/8") on
wrists to 12-14mm (7/16"-9/16") along body closures (Crowfoot, p.171).
Sixteenth and seventeenth century doublets might have buttonholes as long as 3/4"
(Arnold, p.20). Buttons, however, might be disproportionate to the size
of the buttonhole. Arnold gives an example (ibid., p.20, fig. 123) in
which the button diameter is only half the width of the buttonhole, which might
indicate the buttons were made up at a different time or by a different
tradesman.

The depth of stitching wasn't terribly deep. They could be as
short as 1mm deep (Crowfoot, p.171), though there are also examples of longer
stitches. Arnold gives little detail on buttonholes save the length of
the slit (and that only in some cases); from this, however, I extrapolated that
the stitches range in length from 1/8" (Arnold, fig. 84) to 3/16"
(ibid., fig. 120).

Medieval and renaissance tailors set buttonholes much closer to the edge
of the garment than we do today. A slash ending as little as 1/8"
from the edge of a garment may look alarming to us, but as noted earlier, 14th-15th century buttonholes did not take a lot of stress, and the layers of
turned seam allowances of the 16th century acted as a stop-cut for the button shank. In the 14th century, a length of card-woven braid often was
worked directly onto the edge of the fabric on sleeve cuffs, and the
buttonholes cut right up to the edge of the braid. Since worn-out sleeve
cuffs pitched into rubbish heaps have the braid still intact, this method worked
satisfactorily.

On medieval garments, button plackets on unlined garments generally had
a facing, usually a band of fine silk, linen, or possibly a cotton fabric
called "bokeram" (Crowfoot, pp. 160-1). Today, manufacturers of
better-quality cardigan sweaters use the same technique by stitching a strip of
grosgrain down the back side of the opening.

For the most part men's clothing, particularly in the 16th century, lapped the left side over the right, as
is done today, but this was not universal. There are too few examples of
women's buttoned clothing to draw any solid conclusions as to how feminine
garments lapped.

No one has as yet - that I'm aware of - picked apart a period buttonhole
to find out if reinforcing stitches were used, but Crowfoot specifically
mentions that there is "No evidence of a circuit of running-stitches
around the hole to hold the two layers together and to strengthen the
vulnerable slits" on 14th-15th century garments
(Crowfoot, p. 170).

Buttonholes were generally stitched in a heavy, tightly-twisted silk
thread, much like the silk buttonhole twist tailors use today. Silk
sewing thread was widely available throughout most of Europe from at least 1300
on, though until the latter part of the 14th century linen seems to have been used for construction seams, and silk
reserved for decorative and other visible stitching. Linen thread was
sometimes used for buttonholes, as woolen archeological finds with only stitch
holes remaining were probably worked in linen, which does not survive in acidic
conditions found in most European soils. Hemp thread may have been used,
but linen and hemp threads look virtually identical, and only recently have the
experts started to differentiate between the two fibers. Cotton was
rarely used, even the latter part of our period.

Both ordinary buttonhole stitch and tailor's buttonhole stitch
(sometimes called "twisted" buttonhole stitch) were used in
period. Tailor's buttonhole stitch, made by inserting the needle tip
through the slit and bringing out through the fabric, creates a tiny knot at
the top of the stitch, making a more abrasion-resistant edge. There does
not seem to have been a preference for one over the other. Also, there is
no standard whether the stitching is worked right-to-left or left-to-right.

I haven't yet come across evidence for welted buttonholes up through the
16th century, but will
gladly update this article to include them if any come to light.

Making up the buttonhole:

Period buttons were cut open before they were stitched. Substances
such as wax and fish glue were known to have been used to treat the cut edges
of fabrics to prevent fraying (Arnold, p.17, fig. 100). The technique is
called "cereing", from "cere" meaning to "wax."
Think of it as historical Fray-check.

Although Crowfoot notes a specific lack of reinforcing stitches around
the slit, I frame the slit with a row of tiny double-running stitches.
This fastens the various layers together and gives me a stitching guide.

The examples in the instructions are stitched with a doubled length of
unwaxed linen sewing thread on a fulled, skirt-weight woolen twill.

1.Mark the line of the buttonhole.

2.(Optional) Work a double-running stitch in a
rectangle around the mark. The short sides should touch the ends of the
mark. The long sides should be stitch as far out from the mark as you
want the finished buttonhole to be wide.

3. If you are going to use Fray-check (which I
recommend) or wax or fish glue (which is brave of you), do so before cutting
open the buttonhole.

4.After your cereing has dried/set, cut open the
buttonhole. Be careful to clip right up to but not through your running
stitches.

5.Work either a regular or tailor's buttonhole stitch
down each side, using the running stitches as a guide. Take care to
pierce the fabric with the needle straight up and down – if you try to angle
the point toward the slit as you stab through the cloth, you may not take up
the lining/facing, and have to redo the stitching.

Tailor's buttonhole stitch

Finished buttonhole

The top buttonhole has bars worked across the short ends, based on
examples from Arnold.

Grosgrain ribbon backing of buttonhole placket. Ribbon is
permanently stitched to the hem and basted down the other side. The
basting is removed after all buttonholes are completed.

Do not worry if the stitches don't cover the back of the buttonhole as
neatly as they do the front. Period examples have messy backsides to
them.

Below are pictures of some buttonholes I have made for various
garments. As you can see, some came out tidier than others, but you find
the same variation of neatness in examples from the period.

Front opening of a man's 16th c. jerkin, worked in waxed bookbinder's linen thread. I was
deliberately fussy about stitch placement, as I made the garment to be
reversible.

Front opening of a man's cotte, (Herjolfsnes No. 63), worked in dark
blue worsted with a linen lining. I worked a few spoke stitches around
the outside end of the slit because I was worried about how the wool might
ravel. It turned out to be unnecessary.

Doublet based
on pattern from Arnold, taken from garments worn by Cosimo di Medici.
After several years of wear, the linen twill lining has frayed a bit along the
cut edges. So have similar examples depicted in Arnold's book. I
did not make reinforcing stitches around the slit. Structurally, they
were not necessary, though they would have helped me make all my stitches the
same length.

------

Copyright 2012 by Jennifer
Carlson, <talana1 at hotmail.com>. Permission is granted for
republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited.
Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the
author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in
a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this
article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that
I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.